Monthly Archives: January 2016

After yesterday’s summit we all slept extremely well last night. And the rain disappeared too. The camp was still damp and muddy but at least there was no rain.

Strangely I woke up with one of the worst headaches of the week – a piercing pain at the front of my head. Two paracetamols and some breakfast cleared it. I rarely get headaches and have taken more paracetamol this week than 2015 combined!

The porters and guides held a special ceremony this morning to thank us for our tips. We’ve had team of 84 support staff with a single primary aim – getting us to the summit yesterday. The ceremony was 30 minutes of singing, dancing and smiling. It was lovely. Continue reading Kilimanjaro Diary: And down again→

We’ve done it. We’ve all done it. All 18 of us and the doctor reached the Stella Point summit at 7:14am today. And it was one of the hardest walks I’ve ever done.

After dinner last night we went straight to bed wearing our summit clothes. This meant we would only have 4 hours sleep maximum and of course it was wonderful, quality rest, rudely interrupted at 11pm.

After my diary entry yesterday, Jeremy W took a turn for the worse and the doc has given him a full medicine cabinet- something like 9 tablets in total. It was difficult to see such a close friend in trouble like that – but he improved overnight.

It was cold last night. I went to sleep at 9 and woke up at 6 am. Other people didn’t have such a good night’s sleep and found today tough. I only had one sub-freezing loo break in the night and that was enough.

We almost missed the plane. That is a slight exaggeration – but we were the last boarding, at the back of the queue. We had a couple of beers in the airport bar and received a WhatsApp notification from one of the team taking a selfie in a business class seat. We checked the time and realised we were late. Continue reading Kilimanjaro Diary: Frozen Chopped Liver→